your look ● ﬁtness
The Belly of
the Beast
Through basic aerobic workouts,
you can utilize oxygen to burn
away your excess belly fat and
work toward a toned and
sculpted physique
I magine for a moment that you’re working up a sweat,
you’re breathing hard, your heart is pounding while
blood is coursing through your veins to deliver oxygen
to the muscles to keep you moving, as you sustain the
activity for the next 20 minutes. That’s aerobic exer-
cise, also known as “cardio” in gym lingo, or simply any ac-
tivity that you can perform for more a certain length of
time while your heart, lungs and muscles work overtime. So
how do you get the most from your aerobic exercise to burn
off that excess belly fat?
THE SCIENCE OF EXERCISE
When researchers at Duke University in North Caroli-
na monitored people who did aerobic exercise for eight
months, compared to those who did solely weight training,
the former group lost almost 20 times as much fat around
their stomachs.
The aerobics group lost around 2.5 square inches of belly
fat, and a group that combined both aerobic and weight
lifting lost only 1.5 square inches.
Researcher Cris Slentz reported: “Resistance training is
great for improving strength and increasing lean body mass.
But aerobic exercise is better for losing belly fat because it
burns more calories.”
The study also concluded that those who combined
weight lifting and aerobics didn’t see any further health
beneﬁts than those who only did aerobic, in terms of insulin
resistance and liver fat. The researchers therefore found that
aerobic exercise alone is more beneﬁcial for obese and over-
weight individuals for fat loss.
Researchers deﬁned ‘belly fat’ as visceral fat, which is
found deep in the stomach and surrounds the internal or-
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gans, as opposed to subcutaneous fat that is found under-
neath the skin. Visceral fat poses more of a threat to health,
as it lies closer to the organs and is associated with diabetes,
heart disease and some cancers.
The study at Duke, which will be published in the
American Journal of Physiology Endocrinology and Me-
tabolism, looked at 196 overweight, sedentary adults be-
tween the ages of 18 and 70, who were divided into the
three exercise groups.
Slentz added: “When it comes to increased health risks,
where fat is deposited in the body is more important than
how much fat you have. What really counts is how much
exercise you do, how many miles you walk and how many
calories you burn.
“If you choose to walk at a lower aerobic intensity, it
will simply take longer to burn the same amount of un-
healthy fat.”
STARTING YOUR ENGINES
It all starts with your breathing. The average healthy
adult inhales and exhales about 7 to 8 liters of air per
minute. Once you ﬁll your lungs, the oxygen in the air (air
contains approximately 20% oxygen) is ﬁltered through
small branches of tubes (called bronchioles) until it reaches
the alveoli. The alveoli are microscopic sacs where oxygen
enters into the blood. From there, it’s a beeline directly to
the heart.